Stuff

As the third party you don’t actually get many opinion polls focusing on the Liberal Democrats, further details of the monthly ICM poll in today’s Guardian include the first question related to to Charles Kennedy’s recent troubles.

Asked if, in the light of the Labour and Tory parties both having new leaders at the next election, whether the Liberal Democrats would be better off with a different leader. 52% of people though they would, with 38% of people saying the Lib Dems would be better off retaining Charles Kennedy.

Leadership questions like this always produce partisan results and Labour and Tory voters are most likely to want to see the back of Kennedy. However, even 44% of Liberal Democrat voters say they think the party would be better off with a different leader.

While many Lib Dem voters think they’d be better off with another leader, the great majority of Lib Dem voters continue to think he is doing a good job. 76% of Lib Dem voters approve and 22% disapprove, a net approval of +54 – but these are comparatively low figures for a party leader amongst their own supporters – Blair has a net approval of +64 amongst Labour voters and Cameron +76 amongst Tory voters.